


Falling (When I Know It Hurts)

by agenthill



Series: And, In Sign of Ancient Love, Their Plighted Hands They Join [24]
Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Character Study, F/F, Pre-Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-15
Updated: 2017-07-15
Packaged: 2018-12-02 11:32:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,702
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11508561
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/agenthill/pseuds/agenthill
Summary: What Angela knows is this: to love someone is to risk losing them.Or,Angela weighs the pros and cons of entering into a relationship with Fareeha.





	Falling (When I Know It Hurts)

**Author's Note:**

> this is gifted to calli on acct of her (NICELY) reminding me that there are ppl out here who wanna read my fics & bc she draws me things all the time and i love her for it. thx <3
> 
> three things:
> 
> 1) this is the like... third or fourth rewrite of a deleted scene from touch--and it's been a completely different style every time! the last draft was all dialogue, almost. lots of jesse. also feeding ducks. idk man. idk
> 
> 2) this is best read with "breaks (with smoke)"
> 
> 3) i ALMOST wrote & posted smut for the one year anniversary of me starting touch but i had to go gen because someone (vicky) joked abt how much gen i'd been writing lately. lol well here's more

As a scientist, a doctor, a genius, an innovator, and a thousand other titles the world has thrust upon her, there are many things which Angela Ziegler knows.  Most of them are useless things, little scraps of knowledge picked up in idle conversation; she knows, for example, that the letter khet was once a voiceless fricative common amongst Semitic languages, before Arabic and Hebrew split and took the sound separate ways.  Other things she knows _could_ be useful to her, in a medical context—for example, she has never needed to know the link between heart rate variability and arousal, but it could theoretically be useful.  But there are some things Angela knows which are less widely accepted, are not historical or medical fact, and those things… those things matter to her most of all.

What Angela knows is this: to love someone is to risk losing them. 

In many ways, that is the first thing she ever truly knew.  Time has been divided since she learned it into the _before_ and the _after_ , and while it is not the only such split in her life, it is, and will always be, the most important one.  Once, she did not know that love is indistinguishable from loss, did not know what it is to have someone torn from your life, did not know what it feels like to have her mother’s arms grow cold and limp around her… and then, one day, she did know, and nothing in her life could ever be the same.

So the loss of her mother exists, in her mind, as a sort of first lesson, a first introduction to what the world _truly_ is, not a tentative step into adulthood but a shove into it, rough and sudden, one for which there is _before_ and there is _after_ but there is no _now_ because in the moment, it hardly felt real. 

_Before,_ Angela was a child, was innocent, was naïve and careless with her emotions, feeling too much, too deeply, too often. 

_After_ , Angela knows where attachment can lead, knows that despite best intentions no one can truly promise forever, knows that if she allows herself to feel too strongly for anyone or anything then she must, in turn, risk a loss that could, again, split her world in twain.

None of this is written, none of this was ever told to her, but she _knows_ it nonetheless.

What Angela knows is this: tragedy is not uncommon.

This, she learned before Overwatch ever approached her, and she learns it again with each patient who dies under her care.  When Angela was a teenager, and still forced to see therapists, they talked to her about things like _recovery_ and _moving forward_ , and she tried to listen—truly, she did—but the doctor in her knew then, and knows now, that one cannot heal from an injury which is continuously reaggravated.  How can she ever expect to move _past_ the loss of her parents when the conditions which caused that loss are never resolved?  How can _anyone_ heal from the injuries left by warfare knowing that such violence is still occurring?

Perhaps, if the conditions which resulted in the death of her parents were resolved, Angela might move beyond that night, might begin to bridge the gap of the Angela of _before_ and the Angela of _after,_ but it has been so long that she hardly knows who the Angela of before is, and what she might look like in the present.

_Before,_ Angela thought of loss and tragedy as personal, as private, as things which began, and ended, and were to be endured in the knowledge that everything passes, eventually.

_After,_ Angela knows that a single tragedy, such as her parents’ deaths, is only a piece of a much greater whole, and for so long as others suffer from the same cause, the tragedy cannot be ended, or recovered from, knows that as long as there is war, she and so many others will never be able to move past their losses.

None of this was among the things she was taught, but it is somehow truer than anything she has learned by other means _._

What Angela knows is this: once something is lost, it can never truly be replaced.

When she joined Overwatch, Angela should have known better than to believe that they could take the place of the family which was ripped from her years before, should have known better than to think that she could regain what she had lost, should have known that no one—even Lena—can avoid the arrow of time, but she was a fool—is a fool—and a part of her believes, still, that they came close to doing the impossible, on their best days. But the Fall made it clear to her that it was foolish to hope, foolish to think that something, once gone, could ever return.

Overwatch's fall is another dividing point in her life, where _before_ she thought she might make a new family, might find something adjacent to what it was that was ripped from her during the Omnic Crisis, and _after..._ after she realized that nothing and no one would ever love her the way her parents did, that her comrades might have cared for her too, but _differently_ , and a substitute is no replacement.

_Before,_ Angela hoped to regain her family, to turn back the clock and to be again the person she was before her innocence was taken from her, to feel she belonged and to feel, above all things, safe.

_After,_ Angela knows that she will never again feel the way she felt prior to the Crisis, or prior to the Fall, knows that try as she might to approximate the past, she can never return to it, can never regain the sense of security, of safety, that came with living before she knew death.

None of this is something she would dare voice to her friends, but it sits there, beneath the surface of her every conversation with them.

What Angela knows is this: death is not the only way to lose someone.

By devoting herself to cheating death, to finding a way to save those who could not be saved, to doing the impossible, Angela thought she might spare herself the pain of once again parting from those whom she loved, and still, she acts in accordance with this belief, even knowing it to be false. For no matter what she does, no matter how hard she tries to keep her friends alive, she cannot force them to _stay_ , cannot keep them from leaving her again with nothing and no one but herself. It was Jesse who taught her this lesson, who was not stolen from her by war or fate or something somehow crueler, but who instead _chose_ to leave her, whose leaving haunts her still months after his return.

Jesse is—and will always be—Angela's oldest and dearest friend, but there is a _before_ he left, and an _after,_ and the distance between those words is a chasm between them even as they sit, side by side, in the same way they always used to, and it can be felt in the way she flinches at the feeling of his palm on her shoulder, unexpected, can be heard in the gaps between their words, which now stretch uncomfortably long, can be tasted in the blood on her tongue as she bites it to keep from saying what it is she feels.

_Before_ , Angela's only constant in an ever shifting world was Jesse; he was the one person who, no matter where she was sent or what she was made to do, could be counted on to be there when she needed him most.

_After_ , Angela knows that she cannot expect him to be there for her always, knows that when it matters most, he might vanish, knows that perhaps, this is unfair to hold against him, but knows, too, that she cannot help but feel that he abandoned her, and she cannot bring herself yet to fully forgive it.

None of this is fair to either of them, perhaps, but it _is_ , and that is not something which can be willed away.

What Angela knows is this: fate cannot be controlled.

No matter what Angela has tried, no matter what lengths she has gone to, no matter what things she has done and what rules she has broken, she cannot cheat death, she cannot cheat ruin, she cannot cheat loneliness.  If Angela allows herself to love someone, if she allows herself to become close to them, there is _nothing_ she can do to prevent herself from losing them, no length she can go to in order to reverse the irreversible.  She has tried, she has _tried,_ and it always ends the same way, will always end the same way: with her alone, in the end.  How many times did she patch Reinhardt up?  To what lengths did she go to save Genji?  What would she have done to save Morrison and Reyes—and for what?  In the end, when Overwatch fell, she was alone as she was before she ever joined, and she feels that loneliness still.

There was a time, in the _before,_ when she thought her actions might have consequences, when she thought if she held tightly enough to something it could not be ripped away from her, when she felt some measure of control… but now, after everything, she knows that if she allows herself to feel anything, for anyone, then she can do nothing to spare herself the inevitable heartbreak when the worst comes to pass—and it _will_ come to pass, eventually.

_Before,_ Angela fought to find a way around this inevitability, fought to save her loved ones, to save _herself_ the loneliness of losing them.

_After,_ Angela will still fight, could never truly give up on those she cares about—has answered the recall for that same reason—but she knows that there are some things she cannot change, no matter how extraordinary her efforts and it is better, safer, not to become attached and risk herself.

None of this changes the fact that sometimes, when she lets her guard slip, it feels so easy, so _right_ to be with her friends, her comrades, and _that,_ in turn, does not negate the dangerousness of such thoughts.

What Angela knows is this: to survive, she does not _need_ anyone else.

Once, she might have worried about being lonely, might have thought she would be happier with other people, but if the time between the Fall and the Recall taught Angela anything, it is that she can make her own happiness, can find satisfaction in her work, and her ability to help others, can be enough for herself, and herself alone.  Might there be a chance for something better, if she were willing to risk, again, loving?  Yes, but the chance for heartbreak is there, too, and Angela would rather contentment guaranteed than wager her happiness entire.

In the time _before,_ she took the risk, and pain was her only reward, and so now, _after_ all that has happened, Angela knows better, knows that it is enough to be content in and with herself, knows that she can be satisfied by herself.

_Before,_ Angela knew she could be happy on her own, but it did not stop her from wanting more, wanting better, was not enough to prevent her from reaching out.

_After,_ Angela knows better than to risk hurting herself, knows better than to form a relationship which could all too quickly be ended by a stray bullet.

None of this, however, is enough to stop her from _wanting,_ not when Fareeha is so funny, and kind, and easy to talk to.

What Angela knows is this: no one knows for certain just how khet was pronounced.

It existed, once, somewhere between Arabic’s ح and Hebrew’s ח, and she imagines she can hear it still, when she says Fareeha’s name, and her voice catches on the letter _just so_ , her Arabic pronunciation tinged slightly by her familiarity with Hebrew.  Such is impossible, of course, but when she is with Fareeha it is easy to slip into such fantasy, for around a woman such as she the impossible begins to feel possible, and she lets herself be fooled into thinking, just for a moment, that maybe the things she _knows_ do not matter.

Such notions are not only foolish to entertain, they are dangerous… and yet, although Angela might never have allowed herself to follow such a path _before_ meeting Fareeha, now, _after_ having known her, everything is different, somehow, her worldview shifted ever so slightly to allow room for _possibility._

_Before,_ Angela would have seen the danger in such flights of fancy, would have known better than to give into the impulse to throw caution to the wind.

_After_ , Angela knows she ought to stop herself, but know she cannot stop, knows that only fools rush in but _wants,_ for once, to be foolish, to risk the things she normally would never, all because of the way Fareeha _looks_ at her, when the two of them are alone.

None of this ought to be so important as she feels, in her heart, it is, none of the little things like the way Fareeha’s name sounds on her lips ought to be enough for her to change her ways… yet they _are._

What Angela knows is this: high heart rate variability is indicative of the potential for sustained arousal.

Usually, when Angela is in situations where her heart skips a beat, such things could not be further from her mind, but something about the way Angela’s whole body flushes in response to one of Fareeha’s raunchy puns one afternoon in the ORCA brings that fact to mind—and once she has thought about it, she cannot forget it.  Suddenly, she begins to notice all the tiny things about Fareeha she finds attractive, and wonders how she did not realize that she felt this way before.

It was easy, _before_ that moment, to dismiss her occasional lapses in judgement around Fareeha as meaningless, or the result of circumstance, but _after…_ after she realizes that there is something much greater at play.

_Before,_ Angela thought that all she wanted was friendship, that loneliness alone was pushing them together.

_After,_ Angela knows what it is she wants, and knows the risks that accompany it.

None of this changes all of the other things Angela knows, for facts are immutable, but somehow, it changes how she feels about them… and, she finds, that matters, more than the facts themselves.

What Angela knows is this: despite the danger, despite knowing better, she _wants_ a relationship with Fareeha.

No matter how many times she tells herself that she is happy enough as she is, and that the risks in this far outweigh the rewards, no matter how close she comes to convincing herself of that fact, all it takes is one smile from Fareeha, one kind gesture, one horrible pun, for all of Angela’s resolve to crumble, for her to once again fall into Fareeha’s orbit and to never, ever want to leave it.

Here, there is no _before_ , and no _after_ , there is only one endless moment that hangs suspended between the two of them, the space between a question (Fareeha’s) and an answer (hers). 

If she wanted, she could stay in this moment forever, could demur, could avoid answering, could continue this dance and avoid the risk that comes with commitment; it would be wisest, to do so, would be acting in accordance with what she knows… but she finds she does not _want_ to do that.

Throughout Angela’s life, there have been many events which split her into _before_ and _after_ , and always, until now, she has wanted to go back, has wanted to bridge the gap and return to before, but now…

…Now Angela finds herself wanting to move forwards, to forget everything she knows and to see what will come after.

What Angela knows is this: Fareeha is worth any risk.

**Author's Note:**

> there you go! hopefully you enjoyed this because i was fucking around with styles (AGAIN) and i need constant reassurance. like CONSTANT i mean it lmao
> 
> title is more 1d blah blah u know the drill
> 
> anyway, lmk ur thoughts! i know im REALLY behind on answering comments (ive been back in the hospital & thats my best excuse) but i promise they mean a lot <3


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